


bigger than your imagination

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 23:31:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11679363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: The girl in Vault C is impossible.





	bigger than your imagination

**Author's Note:**

> Ohmygosh, I have been working on this fic for SO LONG. SO LONG. The file for this fic was created July 15, _2015_. It has been in the works for a long, long time. As such, those of you who follow me on tumblr may recognize a few bits from Sunday Sixes past. I was starting to think I'd never finish it, but behold my victory! \o/
> 
> I'll admit I've been kind of liberal with the pairing tag here, but..........idk. It needed SOMETHING. And we've always been pretty liberal with the Jemma/Grant tag, right? Right.
> 
> Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you choose to review!

“And with that settled, on to our guest in Vault C. Skye? Any progress on your end?”

“Still nothing.” Skye shrugs. “No matches on facial rec, fingerprints, or missing persons. There’s not much more I can do without a name.”

“Yeah,” Coulson says, “we’re working on it.” He takes a moment to stare broodingly at the window, perhaps embarrassed by his inability to gain such a simple piece of intel, and then turns to Jemma. “What about you, Simmons? Anything on the DNA?”

Jemma grimaces. She knew it was too much to hope that Coulson would simply forget to ask her, and yet hope she did.

“Nothing conclusive,” she hedges, busying herself with her tablet to avoid his eyes. “Perhaps I’ll have something tomorrow.”

“Simmons.” His tone demands her attention, and she looks up to find him frowning slightly. “You’ve had samples taken from that poor girl six different times by six different lab techs. You’ve obviously found _something_.”

She sighs. She could likely lie her way out of this (she has, after all, gotten much better), but she _is_ going to have to share her findings sooner or later. It might as well be now.

“Very well,” she says. “Yes, I have found something. It’s just that it doesn’t make any sense.”

Skye sits forward. “Is she Inhuman?”

That their mystery guest might be one of Skye’s people was the first solution to occur to them when the girl made her appearance four days ago. The flash of light that heralded her arrival was rather less intimidating than lightning, and she has both eyes, but otherwise, it seemed obvious she had powers similar to Gordon’s. Still, always thorough, Coulson ordered Jemma to run an analysis of the girl’s DNA to be certain.

And it’s just as well he did.

“No,” she says. “I can say conclusively that she is _not_ Inhuman. That’s not what’s odd. Or rather, it _is_ odd, in light of her appearance, but—well, you take my point, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, but…” Mack frowns. “Inhuman DNA was all you were testing for, right? So…what else could you have found?”

Jemma drums her fingers on the table, attempting to contain the urge to hide under it. A childish impulse, to be certain, but she truly doesn’t want to have this conversation.

“The program we use to analyze DNA has a few…automatic functions,” she says carefully. “Certain tests and searches it runs without any input from the user.”

Bobbi raises her eyebrows. “We know what automatic means, Simmons.”

“Yes, of course. My apologies.” She clears her throat. “In any case, I didn’t think to disable those functions whilst studying our guest’s results, and…they found a match. Two matches, in fact.”

“What kinds of matches?” Coulson asks.

Jemma places her tablet on the table, displaying the results. Not that Mack or Coulson—the only ones close enough to see the screen—could possibly understand said results, of course, but the movement gives her an excuse to stall for a few precious seconds.

“Biological,” she finally admits.

“Wait,” Skye says, looking between Jemma and the tablet. “You mean—?”

“Both of our guest’s parents have entries in our DNA database.” Jemma attempts a smile. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Coulson asks, snatching up the tablet. “If her parents are SHIELD agents, we can identify her.”

“That’s the thing, sir,” she says. Restless, she crosses and uncrosses her legs, still fighting the urge to hide. “It’s not the match that doesn’t make sense. It’s to _whom_ she’s matched that’s left me confused.”

Coulson frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I have run every possible test multiple times,” she says. “With different samples, different computers—even different labs. All of those tests returned the exact same result. I can’t explain it at all, but biologically speaking, the teenage girl in Vault C is my daughter.” She holds up a hand to silence the others before they can react, because she hasn’t even gotten to the most absurd part yet. “And Ward’s.”

Needless to say, the meeting devolves into chaos after that.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The decision to put their guest in a cell was one that earned Coulson quite a bit of debate. None of them could argue the need to keep her contained, not after the way she appeared in their supposedly secret base with no warning at all, but treating an otherwise innocent teenager like a hardened criminal wasn’t something that sat well with any of them. Vault D is meant for murderers and Hydra agents, not high school students.

Eventually, they compromised by putting her in the rarely-used Vault C.

Though it _is_ meant for holding prisoners, it’s a far cry from the cell Ward called home for so many months. It’s larger, for a start, and lighter. It has more furniture, more privacy—there’s even a door, albeit one without a lock, on the bathroom—and is, in general, much less stark. (Especially after the hasty cleaning it received before their guest was transferred into it.)

Another part of the compromise means that their guest has books and an iPod loaded with music and, upon her request, was provided a sketchpad and a pack of crayons. It’s evident that most of her time is spent drawing; she’s taped her creations—swirling and colorful abstract designs—to the walls, which are fairly covered in them. They do quite a bit to soften the concrete.

Thanks to these touches, Vault C is much nicer than Vault D. Were it not for the fact of the barrier keeping their guest trapped, it could almost be called homey.

All of this Jemma knows from the hours she’s spent watching their guest through the security cameras as she ran the tests again and again. Still, upon entering she has to stop for a moment to marvel at the overall effect; it’s different to see it in person.

As is their guest herself.

Though Jemma still has her doubts about the results of the tests (because it is simply _not possible_ that she and Ward might have a daughter at all, let alone one so old), she hasn’t been able to stop herself from searching for signs of herself in the girl.

Over the cameras, she couldn’t see many. In person…

Her hair is dark like Ward’s, which of course Jemma already knew, but the dyed blue highlights are a surprise—the cameras don’t offer good enough color quality to have picked them up. Her eyes are brown, like Ward’s, but seeing them up close, Jemma thinks the shape of them is more like her own. And while her features—the cheekbones, especially—do bring Ward to mind…there’s something about the peaceful smile she’s wearing as she draws that reminds Jemma of herself.

In person, she _looks_ as though she could be Jemma’s daughter.

It was curiosity as to whether she’d react to Jemma’s presence (as well as an odd, inexplicable pull in her chest that Jemma refuses to acknowledge) that led Jemma to accompany Coulson down to Vault C, but it’s the sight of the girl that finally forces her to truly consider the possibility that her many, many DNA analyses did actually deliver the correct result.

Breathing is suddenly more difficult.

Their guest either doesn’t notice or simply doesn’t care to acknowledge their entrance. She’s sitting cross-legged on the ground, back against her bed and sketchpad in her lap, fully engaged in whatever she’s drawing. Even when Coulson clears his throat, she doesn’t look up.

His placid “Miss Simmons,” on the other hand, gets quite the reaction.

The girl’s head snaps up, and she stares, wide-eyed, for all of a second. Then she catches sight of Jemma and goes stark white. The red crayon she’s holding falls from her suddenly limp fingers and rolls away.

“ _Is_ it Miss Simmons?” Coulson asks thoughtfully. “Or Miss Ward?”

With a ragged sigh, their guest climbs to her feet, leaving her sketchpad on the floor.

“Ward,” she says, voice heavy with…resignation? “It’s Ward.” She approaches the barrier, though she stops well back from it, and offers Jemma a tremulous smile. “Hi, Mom.”

The greeting, for whatever reason, puts a lump in Jemma’s throat. The pull in her chest has become a hard tug and, combined with her racing heart, leaves her a touch light-headed.

This is her daughter. She doesn’t know how it’s possible or why she’s so certain, not when it goes against all logic and reason, but looking the girl in the eye, Jemma is absolutely positive: somehow, some way, this teenager is _hers_.

Which only serves to make her apparent claim to Ward’s name all the more disturbing.

(Jemma is suddenly very, very thankful that she joined in the arguing against putting this girl in Vault D. That it was ever even considered—that Coulson has spent so much of the past four days gently interrogating her—in light of her father’s identity, the whole concept is painful.)

“Hello…?” she says, trailing off in silent question.

“Lin,” her daughter—her _daughter_ —says. “I’m Lin.” She fists her hands in the sleeves of the too-large SHIELD hoodie she’s wearing, appearing uncomfortable. “It’s short for Rosalind. Like the scientist.”

“It’s a lovely name,” Jemma says softly. She wants to ask why Lin—why not Rose or Rosa—but it seems silly. There are much more important questions to be asked.

“Yeah, it’s iced,” Lin says, a little vaguely. She fidgets with a sleeve. “But you’re the one who picked it, so…”

“Ah.” Uncertain how to respond—how to _proceed_ —she looks to Coulson for help. He pats her on the shoulder and turns to Lin.

“You’re much more talkative today, Miss Ward,” he observes.

It’s something of an understatement. Jemma knows he’s spent hours here, trying to get anything at all—her name, how she transported herself to the Playground, _why_ she did so—out of Lin. He was just as persistent as (though far kinder than) he ever was with Ward, and even less successful.

…And that’s a thought that has fallen under a new, frightening light. Jemma resolves to ignore it.

“Yeah, well.” Lin shrugs. “No point in hiding what you already know, I guess.”

“Why were you hiding it?”

She shrugs again. “First rule of time travel, right? Be careful what you say.” She smiles, a touch wryly. “I didn’t wanna answer myself out of existence.”

Time travel.

The idea has occurred to Jemma, of course—it would account for Lin’s age—but she’s leaning more towards _dimensional_ travel. That would explain Lin’s father; Jemma doesn’t imagine that any amount of time will change the fact that she would rather kill Ward than kiss him, to say nothing of actually _procreating_ with him, but perhaps somewhere out in the multiverse there’s a reality where Ward _isn’t_ a treacherous, murderous scumbag.

Perhaps.

“Time travel, huh?” Coulson asks. He sounds politely curious, as though inquiring after Lin’s health, rather than a science fiction staple. “How’d you manage that?”

“I have,” Lin breathes out an almost helpless laugh, “ _no idea_. I didn’t mean to.”

Jemma frowns, considering that. “Then how did you know you had?”

She has, after all, refused to answer questions since her very first moment at the Playground. She lost consciousness shortly after appearing, but she kept mum from the second she woke in quarantine—and there was nothing there, as far as Jemma knows, that should’ve indicated to her she was in the past. (Or an alternate reality.)

“Fitzsimmons.”

Jemma nearly starts at the name. “I’m sorry?”

“Fitzsimmons,” Lin repeats, and nods to Coulson. “When I was passing out, I heard you say someone should get Fitzsimmons. No one calls Mom that anymore, so I knew something was wrong. Then when I woke up and there was nobody with me…” She rocks back on her heels. “Time travel wasn’t my _first_ thought, but it was obvious there was weirdness happening. So I kept my mouth shut while I tried to figure out the what. Eventually, it added up.”

There’s a long moment of silence as Jemma and Coulson absorb that explanation…which, to be frank, explains very little.

Beyond that, there’s a hint of despair beneath Lin’s even tone—especially at the mention of waking alone in quarantine—that causes Jemma’s heart to twist unpleasantly. There’s no reason she should be so affected by the emotions of a complete stranger, no matter that the stranger is apparently her daughter (at least to some degree), and yet…

“Why not?” Coulson asks eventually.

Lin frowns. “Why not what?”

“Why doesn’t anyone call Fitz and Simmons Fitzsimmons?” he clarifies.

The look Lin gives him is, Jemma thinks, likely identical to the one she’s aiming at him herself. Of _all_ the possible questions, _that’s_ the one he chooses to voice first?

“Just curious,” he adds innocently.

“Uh huh,” Lin says. She shakes her head, disbelieving expression never fading. “It stopped when I was really little. My dad didn’t like it.”

There’s a whole world of meaning behind that deceptively simple sentence, and Jemma—for perhaps the first time in her entire life—is not at all interested in exploring it. She doesn’t _want_ to consider the implications.

So, before Coulson can either press the issue further _or_ ask after more irrelevant-yet-worrying details, she asks a question of her own.

“If you didn’t mean to come here,” she says, “shall we assume you don’t know how your travel came about?”

She consciously leaves off the word _dimensional_ , as she doesn’t want to get drawn into a discussion about it…at least not in front of Lin. There’s no need to insult the girl’s father—even an alternate version of him—right to her face; specifics can wait until they brief the rest of the team.

“Nope,” Lin says, tucking her hands in the front pocket of her hoodie. “One minute I was in your lab, the next I was here.”

Jemma narrows her eyes. There’s something oddly familiar about the grimace Lin is wearing.

“Are you lying?” she asks.

“No!” Lin defends—and then, under Jemma and Coulson’s combined stares, wilts. “Okay, so I touched a thing.”

“What sort of thing?” she asks, eyes narrowing further. “And hasn’t your mother warned you about touching things in the lab?”

Alternate reality or no, Jemma’s positive she would make sure to warn any and all of her children away from her lab. Her work can be dangerous if one is incautious, and she wouldn’t want to risk innocent, uneducated fingers getting her own flesh and blood killed.

“That is _so_ not the point,” Lin says, in a tone which suggests that yes, her mother has made her feelings on carelessness in the lab _very_ clear. “And I don’t know. Some machine or something you’ve—she’s—been working on for ages.”

“Your mother is experimenting with time travel?” Coulson asks.

Something passes over Lin’s face, there and gone in an instant. “Apparently.”

“You know why,” Jemma says. “Don’t you.”

“Who doesn’t have something they’d go back and change if they could?” Lin asks, rather defensively. “Plus, come on, the whole idea is totally mag. It’s a staple of science fiction!” She points almost accusingly at Jemma. “I bet you’ve played with it before.”

It’s a good bet. Back at the Academy, she and Fitz spent many a night theorizing about time travel over beers, and she’s certainly given it more than a passing thought since the world fell apart. Still, the prospect of the risks involved—paradoxes, the unpredictability of the ripple effect, _Reapers_ —has always stopped her (and Fitz) from seriously investigating the possibilities.

Which begs the question of just what’s happened in Lin’s dimension that Jemma’s alternate self is willing to take those risks.

…Perhaps it’s better not to pursue _that_ line of questioning, either.

“You can’t tell us anything about the machine?” she asks instead, returning to the more pressing issue.

“Sorry,” Lin says. “Science isn’t really my thing.”

There’s something of a challenge in her tone, as though she’s daring Jemma to take issue with her statement. And perhaps Jemma would, in other circumstances—she’s never given serious thought to children, but if she had, certainly she would have intended to share her passion for science with them—but as it is, she’s far too thrown by the fact of _having_ a child to be concerned about said child’s interests.

(There’s a cold block of fear settled in the vicinity of her lungs, though; a dreadful worry that Lin takes after Ward instead. Could this child— _her_ child, her _daughter_ , to whom Jemma feels so oddly drawn—be a murderer? Is there a violent psychosis hiding behind the smile Lin inherited from Jemma?)

(It’s a horrid thought…and not one she would ever dare voice. She pushes the idea resolutely away.)

“It is mine, though,” she says calmly. “Do you know how far along your mother is in her experiments? Was this time her intended destination, or have you come here by chance?”

“What are you thinking?” Coulson asks as Lin mulls that over.

“I’m thinking that I’m hardly likely to leave my daughter to go gallivanting about in time,” she says. “Unless I change drastically in the next twenty years, bringing Lin back—or coming to fetch her myself—will be my utmost priority.”

Coulson nods in understanding. “So if this is when you wanted to come…”

“…I’ll know where and when to look for her,” Jemma completes. “But if not…she could have ended up in the Stone Age, for all I’ll know.”

Voicing the possibility brings on a rush of sympathy for her alternate self. To lose her child—and to one of her own experiments, at that—is one of the worst things Jemma can imagine. Regardless of how far along the machine was at the moment Lin touched it, Jemma’s certain it will be completed in short order…if it hasn’t already. Lin has been here for four full days; her mother might appear to retrieve her at any moment.

With any luck, she’ll leave Lin’s father at home.

“No.” Lin crosses her arms tightly—a move that tries and fails to look casual. “No, this isn’t where—when—Mom was trying to reach. Not any _when_ near it.”

“How sure are you of that?” Coulson asks. “If she was trying to prevent the uprising, you’re only a little ways off.”

He sounds more hopeful than anything else, for which Jemma can’t blame him. The closer Lin is to her mother’s destination, the greater the chance her mother will be able to find her. A year and change off the intended date seems doable; a decade or more, far less so.

“Positive,” Lin says.

“But—”

“She’s trying to find my brother,” Lin snaps.

Jemma starts. Her heart gives a similar sort of jerk, as though trying to both leap and sink at once.

“Your brother?” she asks.

“He’s missing.” Lin’s jaw shifts oddly, like speaking the words is physically difficult. “He disappeared when I was little. Just—pfft. Gone. Dad and his people have been searching for years, but…”

She trails off into a shrug that seems very final.

Coulson’s hand lands on Jemma’s shoulder, alerting her to the fact that she’s stopped breathing. She inhales sharply, fighting off an absurd wave of emotion. It’s not as if it’s _her_ son’s disappearance she’s just heard about. Just a boy from an alternate reality—a boy who will never even _exist_ in this reality, as she has no intention of reproducing with Ward.

Still, her heart aches. Perhaps it’s merely sympathy—sympathy for Lin, who looks so miserably angry, and for her own alternate self, who has now lost _two_ children.

“There’s never been any sign of him,” Lin adds quietly. “So Mom thought…maybe…”

Several pieces slot into place. “She’s hoping to make it a closed loop.”

Lin nods.

“What do you mean?” Coulson asks.

Jemma twists to face him, privately grateful for the excuse to turn away from Lin. Her daughter’s eyes look far too old for her face right now, and the sight of them hurts.

“She’s hoping the time travel has already happened once,” she explains. “Her son disappeared. If she invents time travel, goes back to the moment he disappeared, and grabs him and takes him back to her time, then the reason he disappeared in the first place was because his mother took him to the future. Which has the benefit of assuring the time travel has no effect on the timeline, as well as…”

As well as meaning that her son was safe the entire time, rather than enduring some horrible fate. She can’t bring herself to say it, but she thinks (by the way his face has softened) that Coulson understands.

“Got it,” he says. “So…what does this mean for us?”

Made restless by her abundance of (still ridiculous) emotion, Jemma paces away from him as she turns the problem over in her mind. She pokes at it from every angle, trying to draw another conclusion—anything but the one she’s already reached.

Unfortunately, the new information doesn’t change anything.

“We can presume Lin’s mother’s intended destination was several years from now,” she says finally. Again, she chooses not to bring the dimensional issue into things; what matters is what Jemma’s other self _intended_ to accomplish, not what actually happened. “If it were simply a matter of hitting an undo or repeat button, either Lin would’ve disappeared or her mother would’ve _appeared_ by now. She must need to recreate the travel—which means she’ll either be aiming for her original destination, assuming Lin will have ended up there…or she’ll have absolutely no idea when to travel to.”

Lin makes a tiny, devastated noise and retreats to her bed.

“Either way,” Jemma continues, lowering her voice, “it’s not likely Lin will be rescued anytime soon.”

Coulson scrubs his real hand over his face and casts a sympathetic look at Lin.

“Any chance _you_ could send her back?” he asks.

“Absolutely not.” Even if she knew where to _begin_ on time travel, the interdimensional element makes it far too risky to attempt. The greatest likelihood is that she would send Lin into yet another incorrect reality—and there would be no guarantee she’d end up in hands as friendly as theirs. “I’m afraid that for the moment, Lin is here to stay.”

Jemma tries to whisper it, to keep Lin from hearing, but the unfortunate fact is that sound tends to carry in the Vaults. Lin obviously overhears; she makes another despairing noise and buries her face in her pillow, and Jemma’s entire body _aches_ with pain that makes no sense at all.

She wants desperately to enter the cell, to sit on the bed and draw her (other self’s) daughter into her arms, to hug and comfort her and promise that everything will work out. No, not wants— _needs_. The urge is almost overwhelming.

Lin isn’t her daughter. Not really. Even if she really _were_ from this reality, even if there existed a single, miniscule chance Jemma may someday have a child—children—with Ward, Lin still wouldn’t be her daughter _yet_. She’s in her mid-teens and Jemma only laid eyes on her for the first time four days ago.

She doesn’t know Lin. There’s no reason to have such an emotional attachment to her, such a strong need to comfort her in this awful hour. Yet sympathetic tears sting at her eyes and her heart aches and her feet fairly itch with the need to _move_ , to go to Lin.

It makes no sense, but—

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” she mutters, annoyed—at herself, the situation, and the whole bloody multiverse.

Then she grabs the control tablet off its stand, hits the button to lower the barrier, and shoves it blindly into Coulson’s hands before hurrying into the cell.

Regardless of how much sense her attachment to Lin may or may not make, the fact remains that Jemma would be moved to sympathy by the sight of _anyone_ curled into a miserable ball on a tiny prison cot, trying (and failing) to muffle their hitching sobs with a pillow. Dithering over her inexplicable emotional state instead of providing comfort to a lost and undoubtedly scared teenage girl is nothing short of criminal.

“Here, love.” The bed is a twin, so there’s not much space to spare, but Jemma manages to find room to sit at the head of it and tugs the unresisting Lin into her arms. “You’re all right. Everything will be fine.”

It’s not the sort of promise she can (or should) make, but Lin doesn’t call her on it. Lin is far too busy curling into her, sobbing into her neck and clinging to her shirt like a child as she shakes and shakes.

Jemma closes her eyes against tears of her own, chest tight. She wonders how long Lin has suspected that she couldn’t be returned to her time—how long she’s spent fighting off this sobbing fit. How many hours of the days she’s spent in Vault C have been passed in misery and despair, longing for the home she may never see again? The _parents_ she may never see again?

She remembers the way Lin went pale at the sight of her and wonders if, for the briefest moment, Lin dared hope that Jemma was her actual mother, come to bring her home.

How badly must that have hurt?

Lin is gasping for breath between sobs; Jemma rubs her back and hushes her, wondering if it might be kinder to sedate her…but no. Drugging her now would only mean another breakdown later. There’s no hiding from the truth that Lin is stuck here, decades and realities away from everyone and everything she knows.

(Or that Jemma’s alternate self has now lost _two_ children; one to a mystery and the other to her own lab. She spares a moment to hope that the alternate Ward is worth anything at all and will be able—will _care_ —to comfort her other self.)

A soft sound pulls her out of her spiraling thoughts, and she opens her eyes to find Coulson returning the control tablet to its stand.

“I think the barrier can stay down,” he says, and though Jemma can barely hear him over Lin, the sympathy in his voice is unmistakable. “I’ll see about finding her a room upstairs.”

“Thank you,” Jemma says, hugging Lin a little closer.

With a nod, he departs, leaving Jemma alone to offer what comfort she can to her poor, lost daughter.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

(Some two thousand miles away, Grant sits back in his chair, eyes fixed on the very interesting feed coming from one of the cameras his spies have installed in the Playground.

“Evie,” he says without looking away from the screen, “get me Markham.”

His second-in-command has been drawing up scenarios for an assault on SHIELD for weeks now, and whatever he’s got is gonna have to be enough, because Grant’s not willing to wait any longer.

Like hell is he leaving his daughter—time-traveller or no—to rot in a SHIELD cell.)


End file.
